Hamelin Bay is a beautiful place to stay and relax. The local stingrays are giants and seek out human interaction, so if your feet are in the water they will come up to you. There were always at least five or more at any one time.
Most tourists come for a day visit, so midday can be busy, but a lot of the time it was very quiet. It’s a beautiful place for swimming and snorkelling; interestingly the stingrays seem to keep away when you’re swimming. People used to feed them off the shore, a practice now discouraged, thus they come to the shore looking for anyone that might have a fish for them.
With our camp site less than 100 metres from the water, we spent every day at the beach, swimming, snorkeling, fishing, or just following and photographing the stingrays. In the evenings we’d take our chairs and wine down to sit and watch the sun set, and the tourists interacting with the stingrays, which at times was very funny.
One evening we were entertained by a professional fisherman (the only ones allowed to drive on the beach), getting his car stuck in the sand and needing to be pulled out.
Several people went out fishing in their kayaks or tinnies. Tim caught a good sized bream from the beach.
On the morning we left, a swell had come in. The sea was very rough, there were breakers out past the bay. We were so lucky to have had such great weather up until then.
The Hamelin Bay Holiday Park is the sort of place we could stay at for a few weeks just to unwind. It’s right on the beach, quiet with lots of trees and birds. There is power, but the water is bore water so we didn’t use it in the van, our tanks were full enough for drinking, cooking, dishwashing, etc, and the amenities block was clean with lovely hot showers that didn’t smell of sulphur like some bore water does.
Til next time, Helen and Tim
THe long paddock 